How did I do on my 2011 predictions?

The short answer is it's a mixed bag.

The longer answer:

1. Labour will win the Oldham East and Saddleworth by-election but the Lib Dems will be a close second.
• CORRECT. They did indeed win and Lib Dems did indeed come a fairly close second. Certainly by the standards of later by-elections!
2. All 3 main party leaders (Cameron, Clegg and Miliband_E) will still be in post by the end of the year.
• CORRECT. 
3. The AV referendum will be (narrowly) won.
• WRONG. I could not have been more wrong really. We were trounced 68% to 32%. Polls in the months before really did make it look like it would be close but in the end it was not to be.
4. Sarah Palin will do something that will effectively end her chances of being a serious candidate for the 2012 US presidential election.
• CORRECT. Although there are various things she has done I think the "cross hairs" thing and the "Blood libel" comment in the aftermath of the Gabrielle Giffords shooting torpedoed her chances within a couple of weeks of me making the prediction. This Guardian article here from back in January pretty much sums it up.
5. A Lib Dem MP will resign the party whip to either sit as an independent or join another party.
• WRONG. Not even close. In fact despite lots of problems it looks like the coalition is determined to hold together without this sort of upset.
6. England will win the Rugby World Cup.
• WRONG. They deservedly got knocked out in the quarter-finals.
7. For the third year running I predict that Eddie Mair will become the new host of BBC Question Time.
• WRONG AGAIN! I think I might stop predicting this now although it's become a tradition and I might not be able to resist...
8. Liam Fox will no longer be a cabinet minister by the end of the year.
• CORRECTAMUNDO! I am extremely pleased with my predictive skills here! He is the only cabinet minister from the start of the year who was not in post by the end. And when I predicted it it was far from likely he would go. Indeed the bookies had him way down the list of likely casualties. To be fair I could not have predicted the nature of his downfall but the reason I chose him is because he has always seemed a little bit too hubristic and I just felt somewhere down the line this would trip him up as indeed it proved.
9. Including Old and Sad there will be 3 by-elections during the year.
• WRONG. Way out. There were double that amount. And to be fair, Harry Hayfield called me on the likelihood I had got this wrong in the comments on the original blog post straight away.
10. A petition signed by more than 100,000 people will trigger a debate in parliament about legalising cannabis.
• WRONG. There have been several debates in parliament triggered by the new e-petitions site but cannabis legalisation was not one of them. Probably a bit of wishful thinking on my part there!

So 4/10 but the Liam Fox one somewhat redeems me I feel.

2012 predictions coming soon...